


Work Trade! :)

by muniatregia



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:13:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22276900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muniatregia/pseuds/muniatregia
Summary: Hope you like it :)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Work Trade! :)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [simeonscat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simeonscat/gifts).



It started easily enough. It was a late-night message, sure, but plenty of commissions came from different time zones. The request was simple — a headshot of the client's OC, Kyberwolf. She sent the ref sheet over, and the colors were a bit difficult to work with — who puts that shade of purple and that shade of orange together? — but Maya was an artist. She could make it work. Then the client asked for a pride flag background. That wouldn’t be too hard, just stripes. 

“Sure, send it over! :)”  
Maya continued drawing as she waited for a response. 

The notification made her phone vibrate, the buzz snapping her attention away from the sketch.  
“I don’t have the png, soz!!! You can just google it tho. XP” Maya felt the barest hint of indignation before it passed. I guess I could just google it, she thought, checking the spelling of the OC’s niche sexuality.  
“OMNIDYSONPLUXFLUID” she typed into the search engine, clicking to the images tab to see what came up. Strange. This OC was the only thing that came up. As she scrolled, she noticed that every picture was a commission, even the ref sheet she was using now. All the same OC, each one by a different artist. Still no flag.  
“OMNIDYSONPLUXFLUID PRIDE FLAG” was her next search attempt. The images tag was flooded this time, the counter telling her there were “25,270,000,000 results (in .0001 seconds)” The artist recalled seeing that number— it was the maximum amount of search results google would show. Stranger still. The fuck? she thought, as she switched to the images tab. The results were blinding. Neon colors of every shade, somehow, with textures and patterns she didn’t even know the name for. Houndstooth? On a pride flag? Not willing to trust a guess, Maya sent a screenshot of the results to the client. 

“Which one is it?”  
The response came uncharacteristically quick for this client.  
“It’s not any of those. Keep looking!”

Maya wasn’t sure how niche this client’s flag was, but she figured she might as well keep scrolling. She scrolled down until every eye-strainingly complex flag was replaced by another, equally as bright and painful flag. She took another screenshot.

“Any of these?”  
An immediate response.  
“Nope! Keep looking!”

Maya rolled her eyes and considered calling off the commission. She glanced at the smiling face of the brightly-colored OC on her monitor, and reminded herself of the $150 deposit her client had put down already. Half up front, because the design is so complex. Maya knew the client wouldn’t bail on her now… So she guessed she wouldn’t bail either.  
She sighed and kept scrolling. One of the flags drew her eye, the strange shapes on it almost forming a face. As she scrolled, it blinked. Huh?!?- she scrolled back up and noticed it was a gif. The fuck? A gif pride flag? How obscure can these get? Another screenshot. 

“Any of these look right?”  
Another message.  
“Keep looking!”

Maya kept scrolling, somehow sure she’d be able to identify the right one when she saw it. Sometimes she looked through so fast, the results would have to load, the page seemingly endlessly spitting out more and more bizarre designs.  
Another message.

“Keep looking!”

Maya kept looking. She had to be close. She wasn’t even glancing at the drawing. She needed to find the pride flag. Every single one was labeled the same. Every single one drawn by a different artist. Maya sent another screenshot.

“Any of these???”  
“Nope!”

Maya was about to go back to searching, before she noticed the “...” of her client typing a response. 

“Maybe you could try drawing it?”

Maya blinked at the screen. As she looked at the message, she could feel an idea forming in her head. The colors of the flag, the shapes on it… She could draw it. It wouldn’t be hard at all. She switched to the background layer and started drawing. No undos, no erasing. Just drawing lines, over and over again, adding textures, colors, anything that came to mind. She kept drawing, and drawing, and drawing. She felt the pen tip snap under the pressure, but she kept drawing, the screen before her quickly overtaken by blinding colors. A notification on her screen. She opened her phone. 

“That’s perfect! Just use that as the background!”  
Maya smiled. She sent the OC drawing and the flag file, QUILT_2234589.PNG, to the client.  
“I love it! Thank you so much! XP”

Maya smiled as the screen turned off, staring into her reflection in the black mirror.  
The images of the flags, burned into her eyes, twisted and pulsated, coiling into themselves and around the face in the screen. Her room looked different in the reflection, neon colors and detailed patterns on the walls and the furniture. Houndstooth, pastels, spiraling tendrils of something grasping for the screen, someone that looked trapped on the other side. Maya felt heavy, like she’d melt into the floor. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and saw thousands of thousands of flags, folding over and collapsing into themselves, filling the void stretching out boundlessly before her. She let herself fall in.


End file.
